The Oral Legacies Series II: The Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Hong Kong
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The Unique Features of Nanyin

The nanyin style sung by the blind artists is called “dishui nanyin”, “dishui” being associated with fortune-telling, a profession largely accorded to the blind in the old days in China. The singing was originally secondary to the fortune-telling, as it was just a way to attract hire, but soon the terms were bundled together to become a singing style, and it has been adopted to this day.

The lyrics of nanyin sung by blind artists can be delivered in the spoken form close to the local dialect, and are seldom refined. Spoken lines are inserted between the sung passages impromptu. The singer can play multiple roles in the narrative. The duration differs, from a dozen or so minutes to half an hour for short pieces, to hours and even months for the long, serialised stories. Nanyin was incorporated into Cantonese Opera and Cantonese operatic songs at the beginning of the 20th century to become sung arias, this type of nanyin was shorter, and was delivered with variations in musical shifts and with no spoken lines for narration. The traditional “dishui nanyin” was almost extinct by the late 1970s. But composers today are still actively inserting nanyin sung passages in Cantonese opera and Cantonese operatic songs.

In terms of repertory, the nanyin genre is mostly about folk tales, romantic love stories of young scholars meeting beautiful ladies, and legendary figures in history. The narration is in a mixture of spoken lines and singing. The male blind artists (gushi) would use the zheng and the yehu for accompaniment, plus the clappers to keep the percussive points, while the female blind artists (shiniang) would use the yangqin and the qinqin. More recent practices would include the dongxiao and the pipa as accompanying instruments. The most well-known pieces are A Wanderer’s Autumn Grief, Burning Funerary Goods for His Love, Baoyu Paying His Last Respects to Daiyu, An Outcry in Governor Mei’s Office, King Chu Bidding Farewell to His Concubine, A Ghostly Tale etc. In a performance, before they start to sing, the blind artists would say a few auspicious words to wish the listeners luck. A professional like Dou Wun could beat time with his left hand on the clappers and play the zheng with his right while singing and playing the instrument at the same time. Sometimes they would have accompanists for their singing.

Traditional “dishui nanyin” songs tend to be long. Structurally, a piece must consist of three musical passages – the prelude, the song lyrics, and the interludes; as for the lyrics, they must also be in three segments – the introduction, the story proper, and the ending. They are repeated to form several sections. The lyrics are mostly in phrases of seven characters and rhymed. There would also be padding syllables inserted here and there, between the original phrases and patterns, before or in the middle of a full sentence etc., just for emphatic effect or for mood. The singer may alternately use the “zhengxian” and “yifan” modes for expressing different moods. The latter conveys sorrow, and so that kind of singing is also known as “kuhou nanyin”, meaning “southern tunes imbued with bitterness and sadness”. The accompanist is often very flexible in keeping up with the singing by adding interludes or phrases of an imitative melodic passage right after the singer has sung them a cappella. The highly improvisatory manner of singing by the artist, whether in modal shifts, rhythm, interlude and lengthened delivery of a note reveals his or her imaginative handling of the vocal performance.

Photos


  • Guzheng

  • Clappers

  • Dongxiao

  • Yehu